Xiaomi has been announcing smartphones left and right this year, they’ve introduced quite a few phones, including their Mi 5 flagship, and a number of Redmi-branded devices. That being said, smartphones were not the only product types Xiaomi had announced this year though, the company had introduced their new payment service, Mi Pay, about two weeks ago, along with a number of other tech gadgets. The company’s payment service now joins the likes of Android Pay, Samsung Pay and LG Pay, mobile payment services which have been announced at an earlier date.
That being said, the company had confirmed two days ago that the service will be released on September 1st, and that’s exactly what happened. The company has released Mi Pay in China, as promised. Xiaomi has launched Mi Pay in collaboration with China UnionPay, one of the largest payment networks in the world. Xiaomi Mi Pay supports credit and debit cards from 20 banks in China starting today, and the service is available for Xiaomi’s NFC-enabled devices only, at least for now. In addition to launching Mi Pay, the company has also announced that it support public transportation cards from six cities in the country, which can come in handy if you’re into contactless payments and use public transportation frequently.
Xiaomi says that consumers can easily add both the China UnionPay and public transportation cards to the Mi Wallet app, and be ready to make contactless payments. The Mi Pay supports credit cards from 20 banks, and debit cards from 12 banks starting today, and some of those banks are: Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Bank of Communications and China Merchants Bank. “After cooperating with China UnionPay over the past three years, Xiaomi is now truly excited about our joint partnership to launch Mi Pay. We believe that Mi Pay will be a key driving force in promoting the development of China’s mobile payments industry, and deliver much more convenience to our users,” said Lei Jun, Xiaomi’s founder and CEO.
In order to be able to use Mi Pay, you’ll need to own a Xiaomi-branded smartphone which has an NFC chip built-in. Xiaomi has included the hardware-level security in form of a separate chip as well, while they have also included multiple authentication mechanisms which will protect your information. If you have a Xiaomi smartphone with NFC, you’re good to go, and all you have to do in order to set up Mi Pay, is to open the Mi Wallet app, select the option to add a bank card, then insert your bank card details. After you’re done with the aforementioned steps, all you have to do is confirm your actions when you receive a confirmation SMS. Another thing worth mentioning here, is the fact that you can add up to 8 cards to your accounts.
